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MWC membership

2011: BYU, Utah leave. Boise State joins to form eight-team league. Each football team plays the other seven.

2012: TCU leaves for Big East. Fresno State, Nevada and Hawaii join MWC to form 10-team league. Each team plays eight other league opponents, skipping one league team each year.

LAS VEGAS  The Mountain West Conference plans to allow certain football rivals to “protect” their games with each other by making them part of the permanent league schedule.

Such rivalries became an issue after the league decided it would play an eight-game league schedule beyond this season even though there will be 10 teams in the league starting next year. With 10 teams playing only eight league games, each team will have to skip one league opponent each year on a rotating basis. In SDSU’s case, the Aztecs will not play New Mexico in 2012 and 2013.

But SDSU will “protect” its rivalry with Fresno State, meaning the Aztecs will be assured that the Bulldogs will not rotate off their schedule from time to time like New Mexico will the next two seasons.

“We protected Fresno State because of the history and the rivalry,” head coach Rocky Long said.

MWC Commissioner Craig Thompson confirmed this was likely for SDSU but said the rest of the league’s protected rivalries are still being ironed out.

“I think every team is going to protect at least one,” Thompson said. “The problem comes in when the other eight want to protect Fresno.”

Colorado State and Wyoming are likely to have a protected rivalry. Same goes for UNLV and Nevada, which joins the MWC next year. Rivalries likely to be protected beyond that aren’t as clear.

“If every coach here was honest he would pick out who the best team was and say, ‘OK, don’t make us play them,’” Long said.

This year, the MWC has only eight teams, with each playing the other seven.

SDSU and Fresno State haven’t played since 2002 but will play on Dec. 5 in a non-conference game. After that, the Bulldogs join the Aztecs as part of a 10-team MWC in 2012. SDSU leads the all-time series 26-20-4.

For 2012 and beyond, the league decided to go with an eight-game conference schedule instead of a round-robin nine-game league schedule in order to give each team four non-conference games instead of three. The extra non-league game provides teams better scheduling flexibility and possibly more revenue as an extra home game.